Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Today's Britain-wide YouGov poll is the third out of the last four to put the SNP and Plaid Cymru just 1% behind the Liberal Democrats. Given the consistency of these results, there must be a reasonably high chance that sooner or later a YouGov poll will put the SNP and Plaid ahead of the Lib Dems across Britain.

Britain-wide voting intentions (YouGov, 7th-8th December) :

Conservatives 34% (+2)

Labour 33% (+1)

UKIP 15% (-2)

Greens 6% (-1)

Liberal Democrats 6% (n/c)

SNP/Plaid Cymru 5% (+1)

In the Scottish subsample, the SNP hold a commanding 47% to 25% lead over Labour. That marks a reversion to the norm of the latter part of last week, after the Sunday subsample showed a somewhat narrower gap.

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SCOT GOES POP POLL OF POLLS
Today's update of the Poll of Polls will hopefully put yesterday's nonsense about Populus in some kind of perspective, because as usual (or as usual in the absence of any full-scale Scottish polls) it's based on an average of all Scottish subsamples from GB-wide polls conducted within the last seven days by all firms. Taken into account are four subsamples from YouGov, two from Populus and one from Ashcroft. The latest Opinium poll is omitted because the Scottish subsample hasn't been published.

Scottish voting intentions for the May 2015 UK general election :

SNP 42.6% (-1.0)

Labour 26.9% (+0.9)

Conservatives 16.1% (+0.5)

Liberal Democrats 6.3% (n/c)

UKIP 4.6% (n/c)

Greens 2.4% (+0.1)

(The Poll of Polls uses the Scottish subsamples from all GB-wide polls that have been conducted entirely within the last seven days and for which datasets have been provided, and also all full-scale Scottish polls that have been conducted at least partly within the last seven days. Full-scale polls are given ten times the weighting of subsamples.)

19 comments:

Seems unlikely to me that SNP + PC would overtake the Lib Dems, unless the Lib Dems collapse completely. The SNP are at or are near the limit of their support (40-45%). No party has won 50% of the vote in Scotland since the Unionists (Tories) in the mid-1950s. Plaid could maybe do better, particularly in WM polls (ITV Wales poll yesterday put them on 11%), but even if they increased by (say) 10 points this would only add a fraction of 1% to the SNP/PC total.

Also interesting to note from the Welsh polling the weakness of support for devolution of income tax.

Three of the last four YouGov polls have had the SNP/Plaid on either 5% or 6%. All four have had the Lib Dems on either 6% or 7%. If that becomes an established pattern (admittedly a big if), it's almost inevitable there'll eventually be a poll that has the SNP/Plaid drawing level with the Lib Dems, and probably the odd outlying one with them 1% ahead.

If the SNP won over 30 seats next May, then that would be a brilliant result. Due to the influence of MSM and UK wide broadcasting, I would be very surprised if there was a complete Labour meltdown in Scotland. The Liberal Democrat vote will likely collapse due to the coalition government and austerity. They will probably be reduced to a few seats. The Tories may gain a few seats, and I would be very surprised if Labour did not win at least 15 seats.

It's my opinion that the LibDems will be limited to only Carmichael's island seat. Bob Smith will probably lose but that could be a 3-cornered scrap with the Tories in with a shout as well as the SNP – Bob's personal vote should not be underestimated. I can see Mundell losing but Michael Moore will probably succumb to a Tory.

You could well be right of course. The thing that annoys me about that scenario is that it splashes a huge blue area across the south of Scotland, making it look as if Scotland proper doesn't start till the Southern Uplands watershed at best. It's only three seats, but it looks so bad. I do hope the SNP can sneak one of them.

The demographics in the three most southern seats are very different to the rest of Scotland though.... Surely it's better to have Tory seats concentrated than spread throughout Scotland. They are in with a good chance in West Aberdeenshire.

Thoughts on Charlie Kennedy's chances? My former constituency so I know he's had a strong personal following in the past (that also helped Danny Alexander get in next door unfortunately) but it could well crumble. I know my folks for one will be deserting him for SNP but to be honest I still think he's one of the good guys so torn over whether I'd like to see him out...

On paper, his seat wouldn't quite fall on the Lib Dem-to-SNP swing suggested by the latest Poll of Polls, but it would be very close. You'd then have to factor in two contradictory points - a ) the swing is likely to be bigger where the Lib Dems are starting from a higher base, and b) Kennedy's personal vote.

The conventional wisdom is that he'll hold on, but as 1997 and 2011 proved, it's worth being cautious about conventional wisdom when a tsunami is on its way.

What might give us a clue about Lib Dem performance is the constituency poll from May of Danny Alexander's seat. The Lib Dems are have totally imploded, on 16% down from 41%. It may not be the same story in every Lib Dem seat, but Danny being high profile hasn't helped him.

The poll also shown SNP benefiting the most, rising from 19% to 32%, giving them a 7% lead over Labour. Of course that was pre referendum, it would probably be logical to assume the SNP lead is bigger now.

I'd be shocked if Kennedy lost his seat. He truly does have s massive personal following. As already stated Carmichael will also be re-elected. I'd also make a case for Moore as well. In terms of Better Together members he was one of the few to come out of the campaign dignity intact IMO. Also the only other show in town in his seat is the Tories. Call me old fashioned but I can not bring myself to wanting to see them win.

All other LD seats will be lost however IMO. Edinburgh West will be very interesting, genuine 4 horse race there.

Rolfe is right, the political map makes it look like Scotland doesn't start until the Central Belt. And with my tinfoil hat very firmly on, a unionist majority in the borders could tempt the UK into experimenting with partition in the event of independence.